Koduri makes a very loud announcement

After he finished talking up the new R9 290X graphics prowess, Raja Koduri went on to announce a fully programmable audio engine which will be supported by some R7 and R9 cards, along with subsequent Radeon generations.

“We are calling this TrueAudio technology,” he said. “I am very exctited about this technology and you’ll see in a few minutes why.” Koduri said TrueAudio will provide the same artistic freedom to developers like programmable shaders did a few years back in the graphics department. The immediate benefits are that the technology will enable you to hear hundreds more realtime voices and audio channels in a game.

It also allows amazing directional audio over any output and AMD is already working with hardware partners to make the most of the new technology. Koduri said gamers will love the new surround sound, which will be based on extrapolated 3D data from the game. Current generation devices don’t access such data, which means they are inherently inaccurate.

TrueAudio is supported by R9 290X, R9 290 and R260X cards. The R9 280X is conspicuously absent. AMD is already working with Eidos, McDSP, Audiokinect, Cretive Assembly , Gen Audio and several others to push the technology. Founder and CEO of Gen Audio Jerry Mahabub then joined Koduri to explain the finer points of the new technology. Mahabub said Gen Audio is a rapidly emerging 3D audio technology and one of its primary targets is the gaming industry.

He then demonstrated the 7.1 surround mix, which we couldn’t really enjoy, but we’ll ask Fudo to sum it up for us.

Update: Fudo says the audio presentation was impressive to say the least. The same cops vs. robbers demo was already shown at CES, but without the new audio tech.